In an Introduction written this summer, I noted that the 2008 U.S. Presidential election process symbolized some fundamental questions about the relationship between race, gender, and class in American politics. The recent election of Barack Obama clearly represents a watershed. Commentators have noted that the incoming Obama administration offers the possibility of a new and more cooperative way of negotiating and regulating differences in our domestic politics and in world politics. Whether this comes to pass is of course an open question. As political scientists our job is to keep such questions open, to proffer our own hypothetical and revisable answers to them, to foster an academic and perhaps even a public culture where these questions can be seriously, freely, and constructively debated, and to place such contemporary questions in a broader historical and theoretical context. The books under review in this issue of Perspectives contribute substantially to these tasks.